


eyes open, eyes wide

by SongofThunder



Series: Something Lost, Something Gained [1]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe, During Canon, Gen, Humor, I don't actually have a clue what I'm supposed to tag this with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28390488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SongofThunder/pseuds/SongofThunder
Summary: There's a voice guiding him along the way. He doesn't know who she is, but she calls to him to open his eyes, points him towards the towers, and occasionally, occasionally, he can feel her keeping watch.Now if only he could get her to actually talk to him.(AU where Zelda discards duty and communicates with and watches Link along his journey.)
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Series: Something Lost, Something Gained [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2079270
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	eyes open, eyes wide

**Author's Note:**

> yo, when was the last time I wrote a BOTW fic? 2019? may 2019? oh man that's quite a while
> 
> anyways, I've been writing this fic since December of last year. just snippets, never anything with a true plot. I never expected to polish it enough to post, since my BOTW hyperfixation had faded around the edges after I ran out of new material, finished the game, etc, but then guess what happened?
> 
> I got Age of Calamity for Christmas this year!
> 
> and now my love of BOTW is back in full swing and I had to at least get something out.
> 
> enjoy!

_“Link.”_

Hers is the first voice he hears in what feels like an age. Fitting, that the first voice he hears when he wakes is also the last he heard before he slept.

The last? He blinks the sleep out of his eyes, but everything feels so heavy and dreamlike and slow, and he cannot bring himself to move. What does that mean, the last? Whose voice is that? What is he forgetting?

His thoughts slip away from him like fish down a stream.

_“Link.”_

Is that his name?

Yes, he remembers now. He is Link.

He is Link, and this is Hyrule, and...

...nothing else.

Link frowns. Surely he must be able to remember something more than that. He lifts his heavy limbs out of his watery cradle and watches his vision blur in and out of focus, as though he’s awakened from a very, very long dream.

Is there truly nothing more to his memory than his name?

Nothing seems truly real. His muscles obey his commands far too easily. He pulls a shirt over his head without really realizing what he’s doing. He’s holding a— what’s the word, oh, _that’s_ it, _Sheikah Slate—_ in his hands before he can really blink awake.

And through it all, the same voice guides him true.;

 _“Link. You are the light.”_ She hesitates. _“_ ** _Our_ ** _light,”_ she continues fiercely, “ _that_ **_must_ ** _shine upon Hyrule once again.”_

Sunlight, blinding and golden and beautiful, filters in through the dusty, empty cavern.

Link takes a deep breath, and steps into the open air.

—

Names return to him when he touches things. _This is a Hylian Shroom,_ his mind sings in relief when he tugs up an orange-capped fungi from the forest ground. _Safe to eat. Healthy. Better roasted over a fire. Tastes better than rations, that’s for sure._ Thoughts like that last one come to his mind unbidden and without prompting, and though he doesn’t know the context or any memory to come with it, the words themselves are a comfort. He pulls apples off a low-hanging branch and almost beams when they conjure up blurry images of laughter and bark under his hands.

The scraps of memory he gets are just that— scraps. Not enough to build any guesses off of, not enough to remember anything truly important.

Not enough, but it’s a start.

Everything he touches brings up _something,_ whether it be memory or information or just a new sensation, until he’s running his hands over certain rocks, jumping feet first into the mud to remember how he sinks in it, or sprinting towards a glint of color in the grass.

_This is a silent shroom. They glow in the dark._

_This is a hightail lizard. They’re too fast to run after, so you have to sneak up on them._

_This is a stick._ _It’s very sticky._

...Well, they can’t all be winners.

He must look so strange to anyone else who would be watching, jumping in puddles and picking flowers like some kind of child.

But the only other living soul he has seen or heard seems to be that old man he talked to after coming out.

It’s not as though anyone really cares about him and his faded memory, anyways.

—

_“Link.”_

He stumbles and trips, barely catching his balance. “Wha—?”

 _“Follow the point on your Sheikah Slate.”_ Already her voice is fading into the breeze. Link’s heart drops into the pit of his stomach. 

_No._ _No,_ this is _not_ going to happen again, he has been _completely_ alone this _entire_ time and when given the chance he is _not_ going to stay that way. “Wait!” he yells, scrambling to stand. “Wait! Who are you— _what_ are you— can you— please don’t go!” The Old Man up on the hill must think him absolutely _nuts,_ calling after nothing, but he _has to know._

Link fumbles for the tablet hanging from his belt. An orange pinpoint flashes before his eyes, and his face falls.

“Wait,” he mumbles, but the voice is already gone.

—

The Old Man’s idea of a fair trade for a paraglider off the Plateau seems to be “run around the Plateau for a bit and solve a bunch of magic puzzles, all while trying to not get killed by the local wildlife because the only proper weapons you have are one axe, a pot lid, and several sticks. Try not to die. Have fun!”

(Technically that’s a lie. Link could also throw apples at them in lieu of a weapon, but he doesn’t really want to waste food.)

Now, Link is the type of person to go with the flow. He’s resourceful. He uses what he has and he’s good at making sure he comes out the other side.

But even he has to be sensible here. A decent weapon, or at least a bow and some arrows, would be nice.

That would be why he’s raiding a camp full of blue bokoblins right now with a half-carved club, a really long stick, and a pot lid.

If he can just—! If he can just finish them off, the treasure is his! He hopes it’s arrows. He _really_ needs some arrows.

But he’s never fought three of them at once before, and he definitely can’t handle these as quickly as he did.

There’s a scream. He whips his head up the moment he recognizes it.

“ _LINK! Behind you—_ **_LINK!_** _”_

He _feels_ more than _sees_ the point of the boko spear drive into his back—

**“ _NO!”_ **

—and swings around in a blind rage to drive his rusty sword into the bokoblin’s eye.

It dissipates in a cloud of blackened smoke before he can even finish the blow.

 _“Link! Link, by the_ **_goddess!_ ** _Are you alright?!”_

He attempts to wheeze out a reply, but can’t find the strength, and instead funnels it all into planting the spear into the ground to stand up.

 _“Link,_ **_sit down!_ ** _You’re hurt! Don’t just— sit down, there are no more threats I can see. You’re safe. You’re safe for now. Catch your breath.”_

He nods mutely, and sits down. The relief in the voice is palpable.

“ _You’re safe. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll watch over you.”_

—

“It’s not bleeding any more?”

“ _It is not. It seems... stable. I am relieved you will be alright.”_

Link hums. Pokes at the campfire. Decides to just bite the bullet and go.

“Why talk to me now?”

“ _Pardon?”_

 _“_ Not that I’m complaining,” he defends. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to. But why now? You didn’t really seem to notice when I called for you before.”

“ _I did notice.”_

Link starts. “You did?”

_“Yes. I did.”_

“Then what’s different about now?”

Silence.

Then, “ _...It is my duty to guide you in the right direction. No more. No less. But when I called for you during that fight, I had already failed. I may as well embrace the failure for the time being, if it has already happened.”_

“I’d say you’re guiding me fine right now.”

“ _Perhaps so, but my fa— my duty would disagree.”_

She stops talking after that, and does not respond no matter how much he calls.

—

The first shrine was easy to reach. The second and third are up in the snowy mountains, where he isn’t exactly equipped to go. With his current threadbare shirt— he may have found decent pants and boots in that old temple, but the shirt remained the same— he’ll freeze to death long before he reaches there.

Link has survived literal _monsters._ He will _not_ die by freezing to death.

So he picks the fourth shrine instead, the one on the ground. There are a couple dilapidated walls, but nothing he can’t scale— what is _that._

Is that a _laser?!_

Link drops down and ducks just as the blast fires over him and explodes in the distance. He only barely manages to roll behind a wall before the second one smashes into it. The ground rumbles, and the stone at his back warms in an instant.

He’s seen those things before, on the old Temple by the Shrine of Resurrection, but he’d been so sure they were statues. They’d been stone. Grown over with moss.

He peeks around the corner.

This one isn’t dead. This one makes fierce humming sounds as its top swivels, one eye flickering. The machinery glows a soft pink.

Pink isn’t a color Link ever thought he’d associate with _bad,_ but this thing just looks _off._ It looks _wrong._

It looks... _malicious._

“What is _that?_ ” he mutters to himself.

The name doesn’t come. How to defeat it doesn’t come. Nothing comes at all.

Whatever this thing is, it’ll take more than just a look to remember— if there’s anything to remember at all.

...

...Well. He could try and shoot it in the eye, but he doubts he has enough arrows. His shield can’t take another of those blasts, and he doubts hitting it with a stick will do much.

Time to do it the old fashioned way— avoiding it at all costs.

He takes the back path and walks around.

—

He’s out of the shrine with a new rune to boot. He makes a wide circle out of the walls and heads back towards the Shrine of Resurrection. On the way, there’s an apple tree; he can pick a couple and that can count as dinner.

That’s when he hears it. “ _So it’s true.”_

“...You’ve been watching me since the bokos,” he realizes aloud.

“ _Yes. I have. I hoped.”_

“Well, on with it. What’s true?” he asks, pulling himself over the ledge and up to the tree.

“ _You didn’t recognize the Guardian. You don’t remember. You don’t remember_ **_anything._** _”_

Her voice is... pensive. Sad.

Mourning.

“Not really, no,” he answers, tugging down apples from a low-hanging branch. There isn’t much he can say to comfort her, whoever she is. “I try not to dwell on it.”

“ _I’m so sorry.”_

Now _there’s_ a tone he doesn’t like. “Hey. Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

Quieter. “ _You don’t remember enough to know that, Link.”_

As he’s considering the implications of those words, she speaks again.

_“And even if you did, I know better.”_

—

He completes the remaining shrines alone.

As it turns out, the old man isn’t real.

The entire time he has been awake, he has never seen another living soul.

—

“Even now, Princess Zelda guards Hyrule from invasion from deep within the Castle.” His Majesty King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule hmphs. “I see with that stricken look on your face you are rightfully horrified.”

“You never told me that,” Link mutters, pale-faced.”

Rhoam raises an eyebrow. “Champion?”

“Not _you!”_ Link snaps. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

The blood drains from the King’s face, and he looks like he believes Link has finally snapped. And maybe he has, but Link is _done_ playing games.

“I _know_ you can hear me,” he growls. “There’s no use pretending otherwise. You’ve been trapped for _one hundred years?!”_

The voice— no, _Zelda—_ finally drops pretense. _"There are many things I have not told you. You had only just awoken. Would it that I were able to leave you carefree and with no responsibilities, I would—”_

“You’re trapped in _there?!_ With that _thing?!_ And you let me just _stay here_ without _worrying,_ when I could have.. _?_ How are you still alive? _How much longer do you have?”_

Rhoam’s eyes are wide. “Hero. You can hear her?”

Link taps his temple with one knuckle absentmindedly. “She can hear you too.”

Zelda mumbles a couple of words, softly enough that he can barely make them out. The only sentences that haven’t been clear as a bell.

“She says she’s sorry,” Link states in her place. “But that she couldn’t just stand by while she could have done something.” Anger is curling in his stomach by the minute. “My bad. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He can hear Zelda’s murmured reassurances, but guess what, he doesn’t care anymore. He _needs_ to know what he can do to help.

“Where were you again?”

—

The wind rushes in his ears. The King’s paraglider, folded up for traveling convenience, hangs heavy on his belt. And the edge of the cliff yawns tall and proud before him.

Beyond it, Hyrule. The land he loved, supposedly, the land he was born to save.

Zelda has not spoken to him since the temple. So it’s a grand surprise when she speaks to him now.

_“I suppose you will be going.”_

“I don’t see why I wouldn’t be,” Link says, fiddling with the pins on his Slate’s darkened map. Perhaps now he should call her by a royal title, now that he knows she isn’t just a voice, but is _Princess Zelda, savior of Hyrule and last member of the Hyrulean royals,_ but he pushes that to the back of his mind. “Everything’s checked and accounted for. All supplies are go, I have the right direction— maybe— on the map, and the old man— his Highness, as far as I can see, is gone. There’s nothing left for me here.” A cursory glance up gives him a clear view of the castle, tinted pink in the morning sunlight. “And I have you to think of now.”

_“I see. Then I suppose this is where I leave—”_

“Oh, no. You’re coming with, right?”

A pause.

_“...What?”_

“You’ll still be talking to me on the journey. Right?”

_“...I was under the impression it would be quicker if I remained out of it.”_

Link shrugs. “I wouldn’t say that. You know more about the land than I do, and you’d be able to help me with traveling it, seeing as you have all your memory, and I have...” He quiets. “...well, I have barely any. So it’d be a real help if you could tag along.”

 _“I see,”_ Zelda repeats. _“Fair point. I shall begrudge you that much. Is that all?”_

“Well,” Link admits freely. “It’s lonely out here. I was... really hoping to get to talk to someone who gets it.”

_“I’m sure you’ll find others out there.”_

“But I don’t _want_ any others,” Link interrupts stubbornly. “I mean, I do, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive. I can be friends with other people and I can be friends with you, too. I’ve got two hands.” A thought occurs to him. “...We _are_ friends, right?”

Silence. _Please say yes please say yes please say yes,_ Link chants silently.

_“I cannot say we were the best of friends before... before the Calamity...”_

She sounds torn. Like she _wants_ something, but like it lies just out of her reach.

_“But... but I suppose... If you’d like to be, then yes.”_

“That’s good,” he responds with a sigh of relief, and changes the subject before _she_ changes her mind. “I don’t suppose you know the quickest way to Kakariko Village?”

_“The pathways I used to use would serve you well, but you have always been faster going in a straight line, regardless of the terrain. With your skills in traversing Hyrule, and your paraglider, there is nowhere you cannot go. I expect even without my aid, you would reach Kakariko Village in a few days at most.”_

“What ‘skills?’ I would’ve thought I’d forgotten all of those.”

Zelda’s voice is sardonic in tone. _“I seem to remember you scaling several nigh-vertical walls with relative ease. You are... er... slower, than usual, but, compared to the average population, far more than most. And considering you have only so much of your previous vitality, I am unsurprised by your loss, and yet still impressed with what you have. I theorized you were part lizard before the Calamity. Now that you have found your natural habitat, those theories seem to be gaining increasingly more credibility.”_

“Hey,” he warns good-naturedly.

_“Has anything I’ve said been incorrect?”_

He gives a long sigh. “...No.” Then he changes the subject. “Kakariko is past the Dueling Peaks?”

_“That’s correct.”_

“That’s a long journey.”

_“...Also correct.”_

“This _Impa_ better be worth the trek, if I have to go through all this for her.”

Zelda’s thoughtful silence in answer says more than she ever could have with words.

“Alright, I’ll bite,” Link says conversationally. “Who’s Impa? You knew her, that’s for sure.”

_“Impa was an old friend of mine. An… acquaintance of yours. You interacted little.”_

He nods sagely. “I see. We were old enemies. Constantly fighting behind your back. How could I have forgotten? Every day I learn something new.”

 _“Wha— no! That is_ not _the way it was!”_

“Every time we met in the castle, we engaged in a furious battle the moment you left. The day before the Calamity it was three thousand seven hundred thirty-one all. I’ll just have to beat her up this time and then it’ll be a win for me.”

 _“That simply_ must _be a lie.”_

It’s an effort to keep his poker face the way it is, but he does his best and focuses everything he has into staring at the flashing orange pinprick on the Slate.

 _“...Was it?”_ Zelda asks tentatively.

Link bursts out laughing.

It’s been a lonely road so far, but with a sword at his back and a friend at his side, he’s going to look forward to these next steps.

**Author's Note:**

> i have. plans to continue this in a series, but I mostly just wanted to get my thoughts out in a oneshot first. mostly just needed to make sure I figured out how they get to talking. please leave kudos or comments if you liked!


End file.
